He looks at Benson. “Don’t let her corrupt you. Remember the rules.”
“Jesus, Stan.” Benson seems annoyed, but I can’t see his eyes.
Stanley lifts a hand and waves. “Nice to meet you, Lucy.”
Before I can say anything, he shuts the door and runs off. I watch him go and finish eating my Reese’s.
Benson turns around and sighs, “Sorry about that.”
I offer a smile and a bit of unsolicited advice, “Don’t apologize.” I swallow the chocolate. “Never apologize for other people’s doing. You can’t control them.”
He plays with the pencil he took from me last week. “You’re right.” He taps the pencil and then pulls his laptop open and focuses on the screen. I take that as a hint to do the same.
Chapter 7
Benson
Twentymoreminutesofthis thesis.
Lucy is reading her own thing across from me. She has her Real Analysis textbook open, and her pencil touches her lips and teeth more times than I can count.
I keep my eyes on the screen the entire time, acting like I haven’t noticed what she’s been doing this whole time. I’m finding her awfully easy to be around. I had braced for the anxious, awkward, geeky girl that my sister painted her out to be, and the captain-meets-introvert friction, but none of those things are happening. She’s not a nerd. She even dresses like a normal person; jeans, tee, and white socks. Her purse is brown, her laptop has no stickers. She’s neat and organized.
She closes her laptop before I close mine. I start putting my things back in my bag. I look at the wrappers and grab thembefore she can. I hold them in my hand and hold the door open for her.
“Are you walking home?” I ask without much thought to how it sounds until it’s in the air between us.
Luckily, she doesn’t find the question odd. “Yes.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
She looks at me for a second too long, hesitant, but something registers and she says, “Okay.”
We walk towards the elevator. I throw the wrappers in the trash and press the elevator button. She’s clutching to her purse, staring forward. I tell myself that this is fine because I have a real reason to talk to Gianna. It’s about Mom’s birthday, which I have been meaning to coordinate with her for two weeks. This is fine. She lives with my sister.
Late afternoon Camden U, students are between classes. They’re walking about. Some stare, most smile and wave. Lucy is shorter than I realized, so I shorten my stride without thinking about it. I have been shortening my stride for Gianna since I was thirteen.
“Everybody stares at you,” she whispers shyly, looking up at me. In the tutoring room, she was confident and outspoken, but out here, she’s in her shell.
“Really?” I ask, glancing around. I catch a few eyes, but that’s nothing new. “People don’t stare at you?”
She shakes her head. “No, definitely not.”
I change the subject. “How’s your Real Analysis class?”
She lifts a shoulder.
Then I explain, “I saw your textbook.”
“Right. Yeah.” She looks around. “It’s hard, but I like it. We’re doing measure theory now, which is––” She chews her bottom lip like she doesn’t know if she should keep talking. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and I catch her eyes looking down, concentrating on something. Then she looks at me. “It’s the partof math where you start asking what you’re even allowed to do with infinity. You can do less than you think. You can do more than I thought you could before this week. There’s a thing called the Cantor set that’s basically a fractal made out of removing the middle third of a line over and over forever, and it has zero length but uncountably many points in it, which doesn’t make any sense.” She glances at me. “Sorry.”
I have no fucking clue what she just said, but I roll with it.Put me in skates and slap my ass.
“What got you into liking numbers?” I ask.
She chews her bottom lip. “It’s reliable.”
I hadn’t expected that answer, so I look at her face. She’s serious. “Reliable,” I repeat.
